Boston, Workers, and the Trial Penalty

Source: NACDL's The Champion

In this column, NACDL Past President and Coalition Co-Founder Martín Sabelli reflects on the complex history of our modern-day coercive plea bargaining practices.

Through the Looking Glass — Criminal Justice Without Trials

Source: NACDL's The Champion

In this column, NACDL Past President and Coalition Co-Founder Martín Sabelli discusses how coercive plea bargaining distorts the criminal legal system to the point of absurdity.

Police Brutality and Coercive Plea Bargaining — The Long Shadow of the Trial Penalty

Source: NACDL's The Champion

In this column, NACDL Past President and Coalition Co-Founder Martín Sabelli explores how the trial penalty effectively encourages police misconduct by shielding police actions from public scrutiny through an assembly line of guilty pleas.

Legalized Coercion and Mass Incarceration

Source: NACDL's The Champion

In this column, NACDL Past President and Coalition Co-Founder Martín Sabelli explores a painful reality that anyone in the trenches has experienced: The trial penalty punishes everyone caught in the machinery of the criminal legal system but injures people of color and the poor much more harshly.